As London gears up for Vertical Rush, the 'staircase marathon', Iain
Hollingshead joins celebrity fitness instructor Matt Roberts to find out how
to sprint up 42 flights without collapsing at the top

Are you the sort of laggard who stands quietly on the right on the Tube escalator and takes the lift whenever possible? Or do you view stairs as a trifling inconvenience, to be taken at breakneck speed, three at a time?

If you are the latter, you might enjoy “tower running”, an increasingly popular sport for those who think ultra-marathons and triathlons a little too pedestrian. The idea is simple enough: find a building with a lot of stairs and run up them as fast as you can. There is now a Vertical World Circuit, the “Formula 1 of the tower running world” (although I’m not sure there is a Formula 2), which includes the Empire State Building in New York, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, and the Pirelli Tower in Milan.

Next month, on March 3, the tour comes to Tower 42, the tallest building in the City of London with – as the name suggests – 42 storeys. Run in aid of Shelter, the homelessness charity, the race to the top is open to amateurs as well as elite runners. Last year, a team of firemen did the Vertical Rush wearing full fire-fighting gear, including helmets. So how hard could it be? I went along to see if I could manage all 928 steps without having a coronary.

Having congratulated myself on my warm-up – a stroll up the escalator at Bank station, without pausing for breath – I was a little disconcerted to discover that Matt Roberts, my trainer for the morning, had already run five miles before breakfast. Roberts, 37, who has worked with everyone from Naomi Campbell to David Cameron, is in terrifyingly good shape. Unsurprisingly, he is also a huge fan of tower running, and will be taking part in Shelter’s event next month, along with the newsreader Jon Snow and someone who used to be in Hollyoaks.

“It’s such a big challenge,” he says, from the comfort of an armchair in Tower 42’s plush reception. “Right from the off, it’s full-level intensity. Your heart and lungs scream. You run on fear. It’s unrelenting, like squash.” He smiles. “Bizarrely, it’s very attractive.”

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It’s a little late for training at this stage, but Roberts describes the sort of workout regime I might have undergone had I been more organised. (This assignment was handed to me after two colleagues both developed suspiciously last-minute colds.)

Lower-body strength is key to tower running, which according to research by Milan University consumes up to 10 times more calories than running on the flat. Roberts recommends regular circuits of 15 squats (bending at the knees while keeping your back straight), followed by 10 lunges. Amateur runners who do well in the race are often keen footballers with strong core muscles – best developed through crunches – which help them navigate the twist and turns of the staircase.

The best runners race up the 42 floors in around four minutes – but strength alone will not get you to the top in record time. You also need to be a good sprinter. You can improve by running up hills in parks (which requires 40-60 per cent more energy than usual), in bursts of 15 to 20 minutes and with short recovery times.

Frankly, all this talk of training is making me feel a little exhausted. Keen to get it over with, we walk through the foyer, past the temptations of the canteen and out through a back door to the fire-escape staircase beyond. The concerned security man looks me up and down and asks if Roberts is trained in first aid. We’re told that if there is a fire alarm while we’re on the 40th floor, we’ll have to use the stairs to come back down again.

“Is there a technique?” I ask Roberts. “Yes and no,” he replies. “On the day itself, it’s a real scrum [runners are tagged and go off in batches of 100 at hourly intervals]. The key, though, is to run at 80 per cent of your full pace for the first 20 levels, and then just see if you can hang on in there. But don’t worry: most people end up walking parts of it.”

Encouraging stuff. But I bet most people don’t end up walking by level 10. My mistake, of course, is setting off too fast, forgetting the advice to keep something in reserve. We take a breather and “power walk” a couple of flights, although there is not much power in my walk. The numbers turn over painfully slowly: 14, 15, 15 and a half… Roberts is yet to break a sweat. On the 16th floor, we bump into a bemused office worker, taking a short-cut between floors. Despite wearing heels, she beats me to the 17th floor.

Around the 20th floor, however, a second surge of adrenaline kicks in. Following Roberts now, we take four floors at a time, pausing for a rest for 30 seconds, before continuing. We’re soon at the 24th, the 28th, the 32nd, the 36th. I’m hallucinating slightly, certain that I’m going to be sick. But the view, when we eventually make it to the top – in a not entirely embarrassing 8 minutes 23 seconds – is so magnificent that it’s almost worth the slog, even if I am observing Tower Bridge at 590 feet from a sedentary position, gasping both for water and for breath.

“It’s quite a sense of euphoria, isn’t it?” says Roberts, looking as if he has just taken the lift up. Which, thankfully, is how we travel back down again.